Or at least this mythbuster, singular, will

First somewhat of a lengthy introductory preamble to "set out my stall".... It was suggested in a thread a few days ago that I put my "foo fighters" hat on and set straight some of the myths in hi fi. This being a "subjectivist friendly" site I presumed Marco would not wish me to go ahead with this here on AOS.... but I have exchanged PM's with Marco on the matter and he's all for it!

Hi Fi is a vast subject which encompasses many engineering disciplines such as analogue electronic engineering, digital electronic engineering, mechanical engineering and acoustics etc. My own area of expertise is analogue electronic engineering, and it is within this field that most of my "lecture" shall be aimed. "Lecture"? Well yes.. rather than a debate as such this is me offering information, fact and a smidgeon of opinion based on decades of professional EE experience, so if you feel the need to add that you tried a "foomaster MkII green pen" on your CD's and it "literally transformed" the sound quality then please don't bother...

Once upon a time hi fi was a mainly technical hobby. Back in the '50's and '60's many people built their own gear from kits, or from scratch based on articles in the likes of "Wireless World " and "Practical Wireless" etc, and people tended to have a much greater knowledge of electronics than in today's much broader based hobby.
The likes of Donald Aldous, Angus Mackenzie and Stanley Kelly ruled the roost in hi fi reviewing and were highly competent engineers in their own right. Anyone suggesting that fuses, mains cables etc could effect the sound would have been dismissed as a lunatic as swiftly as someone claiming to speak to fairies at the bottom of the garden....

Today the majority buy "black boxes" and form a system from them in which everything beneath the covers is regarded as "here be dragons".

Electronics is a complicated subject.... and not a particularly intuitive one to many people. This makes it fertile breeding ground for myth and suspicions to be put in the minds of the largely non technical end users of hi-fi equipment. Many of these can be traced back to specific marketing ploys in the dim and distant past.. some not so distant! Many others to people adding 2+2 and making 5 and then telling enough people about it...
In these days of forums and the internet, Chinese whispers can travel very quickly and unfortunately become entrenched until they become "common knowledge" and even "accepted wisdom"... despite in many cases being QUITE WRONG.

It has sadly come to the stage where, if I may make a clumsy medical analogy, we were once in an age of enlightenment where scanners were coming into use, computers making a difference, new and effective drugs coming into use on a monthly basis... and then we get to where we are now... where due to Chinese whispers on the internet etc, lay people have once again started to believe in "unbalance of choleric and melancholy", "the evil eye" or "demons needing releasing" to such an extent that an experienced doctor telling them this is just old wives tales is regarded as a quack by his patients!

I shall, if readers will indulge me, attempt to bust a few of these myths, explain where others are true but only in certain cases, some true but likely to have such a small effect as to be unnoticeable, some wrong other than in a very specific case etc etc.

As promised elsewhere earlier I shall start with switch mode V linear regulated PSU's...